Daily Hassles

Daily Hassles

1. Hassles

   • minor fustrations and annoyances of everyday life
   • their emotional effects are fairly short lived
   • if they accumulate over a period of time this could affect our well-being
   • this could result in more serious stress reactions such as anxiety or depression
   • research into it
     • Bouteyre et al (2007) - investigated reltationship between daily hassles and mental health of students during transition period from school to uni
       • 1st year psychology students at French uni completed hassles part of the HSUP and the Beck Depression Inventory as a measure of any symptoms of depression that might be attributable to the hassles of transition
         • found that 41% of students studied suffered depressive symptoms and was a positive correlation between scores on the hassle scale and the incidence of depressive symptoms
           • study shows that transition is frequently fraught with daily hassles and that these can be considered a significant risk factor for depression

2. The Hassles and Uplifts scale (HSUP) (Delongis et al 1982) measures the respondents' attitudes towards daily situations - instead of focusing on the more highly stressful life events the HSUP provides a way of evaluating postitive and negative events that occur in each person's daily life

   • they claim that rather than major life changes, it is day-to-day hassels or small uplifts that determine our overall levels of stress

3. Uplifts

   • positive events that occur in the course of the day
     • they can counteract the negative effects of hassles and help lower stress levels, improve our performance and self esteem
   • Gervais (2005)
     • asked nurses to keep diaries for a month, recording all hassles at work & asked to rate their own performance over same period
       • at end of month - clear that daily hassles were found to increase job strain and decrease job performance
         • nurses felt that some of the uplifts (e.g. compliment from a patient) counteracted negative effects of daily hassles
           • as well as overcoming the stress associated with their daily hassles - uplifts also improved their performance of the job

4. Daily hassles Vs life changes

   • daily hassles broadly accepted as comparable to life changes as a significant source of stress
     • in an Australian study (Ruffin 1993) daily hassles linked to greater psychological and physical dysfuntion than major negative life events

5. evaluation

   • a number of studies (e.g Ruffin 1993) have shown that daily hassles provide a more significant source of stress for most people than major life events
     • explantion of this: an accumulation of minor daily stressors creates persistant irritations, fustrations and overloads which then result in more serious stress reactions such as anxiety and depression (Lazarus 1999)
   • most of the data from research on daily hassles is correlational - means we cannot draw causal conclusions about the realtionship between daily hassles and well-being
   • individual differences: gender
     • e.g. Miller et al (1992) found pets for females were commonly associated with uplifts
       • for males they were more likely to be seen as hassles e.g. time and money